I find people wondering why I like the Sailor Moon remake, something which they consider to be typical, boring, and badly animated. Let me remind all these people how I said I liked it in a topic that was titled “Average beats flashy trainwreck”. I never said it’s an amazing show, I only said it was better than all the shows that try to fool us into believing they are amazing and fall flat on their faces. I appreciate it for being good at being average; nothing else.

But here comes the big question; what exactly counts as average? Technically, it’s something you consider a complete mediocrity, a 5 out of 10, something which as a whole doesn’t make you hate it or love it. But how can someone figure out what counts as average? It sounds understandable on paper, but when you try to look for examples, most people will have a hard time pinpointing it. Reasons for that include the following. 

1) We tend to forget things we don’t have any emotional attachment to. Meaning, if something is completely mediocre and doesn’t make us feel anything about it, we will forget it. So it’s hard to tell what average is because we forget everything that is average. 

2) Most casuals confuse average with good. This is why you see most of them scoring such shows with a 7 or more on MAL. They don’t know that “it’s ok” translates to a 5, not a 7. 

3) The first show we watch in any genre, becomes our point of reference for whatever we watch next and is similar to it. It can be the most passable thing in the world, it can be a masterpiece, or it can be a complete mess. It doesn’t matter because it’s our first, thus it is the best of its kind and gets a 10 for simply having nothing to compare it with. We will most likely find something better to it eventually, and that new show will take the top spot while lowering the score of the previous top to something less than a 10. But even if we do that, we again don’t pinpoint what counts as average when we begin with a 10 instead of a 5.

Though I must make clear that the first title you watch is the one that sets the standards. It doesn’t matter how complicating the story is or how developed the themes are. It doesn’t even matter if it normally isn’t meant for your age, or gender, or social beliefs. Even if you give it a 10, in your mind it becomes the standard of anything that is similar to it. Basically it sets the bar of your expectations, and for whatever you watch next. This is why the first show you watch is the most crucial as far as your critical thinking is concerned.

And this is what happens with most people who watch television. The first anime they bump onto, will form their initial impression for the whole medium. This impression can of course change later on, but it usually takes a lot of time and dedication for someone to get over those initial assumptions. We are creatures of habit and we don’t like changing our opinions too fast, even if deep inside we know we are wrong. Most kids will probably bump onto something like Pokemon or Bayblade. 

This will be their 10/10 and it will usually take years to realize there are better stuff out there. Usually because they don’t care to search for different stuff. Most adults on the other hand will probably bump onto some sleazy ecchi or hentai clip first, and that will become their 10/10. This is as good as anime can be. It will again take years for most of them to get over that impression. Usually because they also don’t care to search for different stuff. 

And now I will use myself as an example. You think I became an overcritical snob out of nowhere? No, just like with everybody else, the first tiles I watched are what set the bar for what followed, and that bar was very unusual. You see, I was 7 years old when anime began airing on my country’s television for the first time. And the first titles that aired were not all kidstuff. They were promoted as kidstuff because of the ignorance the channel owners had, who just like every other adult in the 80s assumed all cartoons are for kids. They aired those suckers without double checking anything. 

Furthermore, the first dubbing studios were not owned by the channels broadcasting those anime. Those people just loved doing dubbing in their free time. This meant that none of them ever went to the guys upstairs and asked if the stuff they were given to dub were really appropriate for kids. No sir, they just took them already dubbed, and aired them as they were. 

Also, the voice acting was usually terrible because the voice actors didn’t really care that much to be passionate. The result was so comical that the adults assumed the shows were comedies. Even when they weren’t.

Also, there was no official age restriction on those initial anime. There normally was, but the first 50 or so titles that were dubbed in my language came from bootlegs; not official sources with the covers showing the appropriate ages. 

And this is why I was watching really dark, violent, and depressing ultragore OVA stuff during happy hour for children, on mainstream television before I was even 10. Same thing happened on video stores; they were placing really violent stuff along with the kidstuff, simply because they were animated. And that is why thanks to the complete ignorance and lack of planning of my country, my bar was set very high. 

By the time the Pokemons arrived I didn’t give a damn about them. Those were never 10/10 for me, as they are for most children today. I was also never taken by the hype of Elfen Lied when it first came out and everybody was screaming how mature it is because of the violence and whatnot. I was like “this, pf, seen better since I was 8”. Schlock violence was never my 10/10 either. And then I watched Legend of the Galactic Heroes, so the bar went up all the way to Mars. And THEN I began writing my first reviews, which developed my critical thinking. 

So as you see my standards were already very high to begin with, and with the added fact that I was reviewing, I was becoming more and more strict by the day. This is something nobody who began with Naruto and then moved to Attack on Titan can possibly understand. It’s those people who assume I am trolling, or I am looking for flaws, and I don’t enjoy anything. And all of that because my first show wasn’t Pokemon, I didn’t find it to be “ok” and I didn’t give it a 10/10. My point of reference was way different. 

And by the way, for all of you who say that I hate sports anime and I disprove them without ever giving them a chance, do you know what my first sport show was? It wasn’t Captain Tsubasa, it wasn’t the Prince of Tennis, and it sure as heck it wasn’t Kuroko Basket. It was Sport Billy. A shitty cartoon from the 70s, about a boy from another planet that looked like ancient Greece, traveling in time, fighting evil aliens that were dressed like the Smurfs, accompanied by a talking dog, and using a bag from which he could pull out anything he wanted. And that is what I was expecting from every other sport show thereafter. I was expecting dinosaurs and space travel and pulling cars out a bag. And I never got that again; all I was seeing was some guys playing with balls, and it was all about friendship and teamwork. 

If I wanted something about training hard to be the best, I wouldn’t be watching Captain Tsubasa, I would be watching Dragonball for that shit. It had dinosaurs and space travel and pulling cars out of tiny capsules. And they didn’t simply shake hands and went home when they were losing a match. All that were way below the bar set by Sport Billy. And ok, it is true that my first sports show had as much relation to actual sports as Urobutcher has to actual good storytelling. But hey, it was still my bar. And I loved that bar with all its absurdity, in the same way so many others memorize hand seals and assume the show is about ninjas. That’s their bar, and if it’s so hard for them to understand why I like Sailor Moon, it is equally hard for me to find the appeal in a show which is only about guys playing with balls. 

Where are my dinosaurs?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2_0R19111Y